Legacy Difficulties/Item Level Squish

Why is there such a huge gap in item level from when you reach 60? I dont understand why Blizz think its fine. I feel like alot can be resolved if they just squished the item level gaps and allowed old content to be relevant. They have multiple expansions that they could in someway implement into end game. So many dungeons, and all they’ve done is add the occasional timewalking that gives useless rewards.

You could literally have every dungeon and raid in the game scale to max level as a setting, call it ‘Legacy’ or something. Give them similar to mythic difficulties, and give rewards for completing them all. Players could work on completing every possible dungeon and raid on legacy/mythic difficulty, making them harder and giving the nostalgic feeling from when you originally did the dungeons. Each expansion could reward an achievement that gives a mount relevant to that expansion for doing all the dungeons on Legacy 15 or something, or transmog rewards for doing them on Legacy 10. What ever, but all that is essentially still in the game, and you wouldn’t be doing the same dungeons all the time. They could add more content without adding anything new. It would be something else for players to work towards.

In terms of item levels;
At the moment you reach level 60 and have 130-140 ilvl. You then have to join the same dungeons you’ve leveled through to get better gear. Then you do the same dungeons on heroic, then the same dungeons on mythic+. Like come on. How much money are these guys making to add such little content at 60 when the main focus is on end game? Sometimes I think there’s too many levels of difficulty and that’s part of the problem. Normal, heroic, mythic, mythic+ 1-15. All giving different item level rewards with big gear difference gaps. Same situation with PvP gear with all the seperate upgrades.

I honestly think it should have maxed out at 200 ilvl before 9.1. So from 140 questing, to 148 normal, 156 heroic, 164 mythic, 168 m2, 172 m4, 176 m6, 180 m8, 185 m10, 190 m12, 195 m14, 200 m15.
Legendaries would scale similarly, rank 1 - 180, rank 2 - 190, rank 3 200, rank 4 210.
When you reach 60 you’d be around 20k health, at 200 ilvl you would be around 32k health. I honestly think this would drastically improve the experience and players wouldn’t feel so useless and behind for so long.

It could be similar in PvP. Although we all know the WoD gearing system would be better for PvP. Separating PvP and PvE gearing, that essentially adds more content, and something else to work towards. If you only want to PvP the PvP gear would just be 2 sets an honor set and a conquest set. But if they want to keep item upgrading maybe it could only be upgradable once or twice, something like this;
Honor set rank 0/2 - 148 outside PvP. 180 in PvP
Honor set rank 1/2 - 156 outside PvP. 185 in PvP
Honor set rank 2/2 - 164 outside PvP. 190 in PvP
Conquest set (weapons) rank 0/1 (0/2)- 172 outside PvP. 195 in PvP
Conquest set (weapons) rank 1/1 (1/2)- 180 outside PvP. 200 in PvP
Conquest weapons rank 2/2 - 185 outside PvP 205 in PvP.

Rank 1 requires no rating, rank 2 requires 1800 rating, rank 3 weapons require 2400 rating. Rewards from 1000-2400 would reward more conquest cap per week. Also with this system it would mean you could get more conquest per win because its not impacting the best PvE gear. So conquest pieces would cost what they did in WoD, conquest cap would be 1000 per week. Following weeks cap would be whatever rating you are, e.g. 1400 you can cap 1400 conquest. Also, the item level difference wouldn’t make as much difference because its not scaled so high! 2v2 wins would reward 100 conquest, 3v3 125 conquest, RBGs 250 conquest.

I dunno, I’m just fed up of the item level gaps ruining the game and experience. I’m 221 ilvl, and most of my characters are 220 with 1 being 213. But I haven’t enjoyed the gearing experience at all. And that’s a problem because that is what end game is about. But feeling like a level 1 again at 60 because you’re so behind on gear is not the experience I want.

Making old content relevant is a good idea on paper, but in reality it is almost impossible to pull off well in this game. The current class design would either make most old dungeons and raids trivial or borderline impossible to beat by the majority of players, as they were made and balanced around the class designs of the time.

I do agree that the current item level jumps are far too high however. There is really no reason why there should be such a huge difference between item levels inside a single tier. The amount of item level jumps between difficulties should be cut in half at least.

100% agree.

From BFA, we slashed in half (approx) ilevels from last patch and level was slashed in half. Therefore we can assume, the intended value of an ilevel in power terms is represented by half the value (ie 2 ilevels of power in BFA = 1 ilevel of power in SL). We have a rough confirmation for this in that each BFA “tier” regarding key level upgrades in M+ would increase an item’s ilevel by 5, whereas in SL it increases it by 3 (just over half).

YET.

In BFA, you would typically enter (last patch) normal dungeons to procure 400ilevel gear. Maximum ilevel was 475 from mythic+15 (485 if we include the few drop pieces, but let’s concisder the majority average of 475).

That’s 75 ilevels of power. Now, if SL is going to represent the same power climb, we’d expect to see an ilevel increase of about half (37-38 ilevels) So if the baseline from normal is 158, then the “best” gear would be about 197.

And yet we have the best “average” gear is 226. So despite the ilevels representing more power per individual ilevel than in SL, we see the jump from normal dung to maximum is a lofty 68 ilevels, only 7 less than the amount of ilevel jumps in BFA.

This would be equivalent (in power terms) to the final ilevel of mythic loot in BFA last patch being ilevel 536 in terms of the power granted in comparison to normal level gear.

It is absolutely ridiculous the difference between starting and high players atm, because for some reason, despite squishing the ilevels, blizzard had made the increases barely different across the scope.

Raid tiers in BFA = 15 ilevels per tier, in SL it is 13. Surely it should have been 7?

And this is the first aptch we’re talking about as well, and we’re already at a point where a max char has over 100% more health and secondaries than a fresh ding. I am fairly sure in BFA first patch, the difference between a geared char and a fresh char (or in normal dungeon gear) was not a difference on over 100%.

Blizzard need to reign it in big time else they’ll have to squish every expo.

You’re comparing it wrongly, because you’re comparing patch 8.3 ilvl’s with patch 9.0 ilvl’s which are two very different places in an expansion lifetime.

Launch patch always gave us very large item level ramp from the start. Last expansion was BFA and hitting level 120 was giving you about 285-290 ilvl. Top end mythic content was 385+ (idk what warforge cap was, 395?). That’s about a hundred item levels gained within the same patch, and you’re complaining that nowadays we gain 70.

WoW is built that way because gear itself is extremely boring. Upgrades need to feel noticeable, because otherwise this would be extremely dull. 90% of all gear in the game follows the same template:

Main stat
Secondary A
Secondary B

That’s it. Pieces with special effects are few and very far between.

Would it be exciting to kill mythic boss for a gear piece that is marginally better and allows me to do 0,01% more damage? Oh hell no. This patch is bleeding players profusely, as there is no power ramp system despite there being long content drought. Usually those long patches would bring valor system that allowed you to gain 5-10 more item levels. Not this time. Progression has hit a brick wall and players gave up.

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